If You See Me, Don't Say Hi

by Neel Patel

  “So what’s the plan now?”

  I told him what had happened. I wasn’t ashamed: Dr. Bernstein’s son, Seth, worked at Target. He was a college dropout. He played in a band. I remember my mother coming home one evening after seeing the Bernsteins at a hospital function, appalled.

  “You won’t believe,” she said. “You won’t believe the way Susan went on about Seth, as if he is world famous.” She gestured with her hand. “What rubbish. Can you be happy with a son like that?” Later, she made sure to tell me that if I ever did something like that, she would die.

  “How’s Seth?”

  Dr. Bernstein’s face darkened. “Seth is okay,” he said. “He’s in therapy. We’re just grateful he’s home. Let’s be thankful for that.”

  I didn’t know Seth was in therapy. I remembered him as an outgoing child, inviting me to shoot hoops with him after school. I couldn’t help but imagine what my mother would have said if I were in therapy, too.

  “We’ll tell everyone you fell and broke your head.”

  Three months before, when I had gotten the news that I hadn’t matched, I drank two forties and punched a hole in my wall. No one could explain it. My board scores were high. My interviews went well. It was one of those freak things. The match was like a lottery: you chose what residency you wanted and where, then some mysterious process handled the rest. Most people got what they wanted: OB, Family, Internal. But a few of us were left behind. Some people “scrambled,” setting aside their pride to join programs in undesirable states. I went home and sulked.

  * * *

  One night, I got bored and went to a bar. The bar was empty, so I played on my phone for a while, checking Facebook and Instagram, until I noticed an attractive woman walk into the room. She wore a low-cut blouse of black fabric. Her skin shone like amber. Dark hair bounced at her shoulders. Something stirred inside me. I hadn’t been with a woman in months. In medical school, I’d dated a Persian girl named Shanaz. After the match, I’d gotten drunk and showed up at Shanaz’s front door, but she wasn’t home, so I went to a bar and picked up a white girl instead.

  “Can I get you anything?” the bartender asked.

  I ordered a beer and played it cool for a while, scrolling through a bunch of Shanaz’s old pictures on Instagram. When I looked up from the table, the woman was gone.

  “Here you go,” the bartender said.

  He deposited the beer and walked away. A group of college students came in. They started screaming at one another and ordering a round of shots. Had I ever been that obnoxious? I was about to put some cash down and call it a night when I felt the air stir behind me.

  I spun around.

  The woman’s blouse was silver, not black. She smelled of perfume. She was much younger looking up close. All that makeup had been a ruse. I was about to ask her who she was when it dawned on me. I should have known all along.

  “Ankur, right?” she said. “I thought it was you. I was just thinking to myself: Is that Ankur Patel?”

  The last time I had seen Anjali was at a wedding, shortly after high school graduation. She looked completely different now. Her hair was slicked straight. The acne marks were gone. She leaned in to give me a hug and I felt the damp surface of her skin.

  “I had no idea it was you,” I said.

  Had I been staring at her inappropriately? I offered her a drink.

  “Dirty martini.”

  I remembered what my parents had said, that Anjali had a drinking problem. I ordered the martini.

  “Are you visiting family?” she asked.

  “Sort of.”

  “Well, I live here,” she said, sitting next to me. “But I’m sure you’ve already heard.”

  My expression must have changed, because she put her hand on my arm.

  “It’s okay,” she said, laughing. “It’s not like it’s a secret. Everyone knows about the marriage that never was.”

  The martini came and Anjali carefully plucked the olive from its toothpick and popped it into her mouth.

  “I guess you get tired of hearing about it,” I said.

  “Actually,” she replied, chewing, “I think it’s kind of funny.”

  “You do?”

  She stared at me. “You’re aware of what happened, aren’t you?”

  I shook my head.

  “He was gay.”

  “Your husband?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How did you find out?”

  She frowned.

  “I found some websites in his browsing history—and there was the sex. After a while, you have to wonder why you haven’t had it yet. His parents were desperate to get him married.” She finished her martini in a single gulp. “And now I know why.”

  Perhaps it was the alcohol, or the circumstance of our meeting, but we were able to open up to each other in a way we never had before. I couldn’t reconcile the Anjali I had known before—the girl who avoided eye contact at every turn—with this new woman before me. She was candid, explaining that she hadn’t been in a relationship with anyone in years.

  “The worst part about all of this is the gossip. When you get divorced, everything from your marriage comes spilling out.”

  “Like what?” I asked, boldly.

  She shook her head. “It’s not important.” She asked me what I was doing in town and I told her the truth. “Wow,” she said, tapping her glass against mine. “We’re the talk of the town.”

  * * *

  We went home separately that night, but the next day, I thought about Anjali all afternoon. I went on Facebook and found her profile. Her pictures were recent, blurred snapshots of herself at bars. Her pose was always the same: her head tilted, her hand on her hip, her lips parted, revealing a chunk of white teeth. I spent nearly an hour clicking past each one, until I got to an old picture of Anjali from years ago. It was taken at a party my parents had thrown when I was twelve. The memory of that evening flashed through my mind like a dream. Families from all over crowded our living room, eating curry out of Styrofoam trays. The women wore silk saris. The men wore dress shirts and slacks. Anjali wore a peach lengha, with pink and purple jewels. My father played “Jumma Chumma De De” on our stereo system, bouncing his shoulders like Amitabh Bachchan in the movie Hum. I had seen that movie and laughed. “It’s not even him singing,” I’d said. “How can you watch this crap?” Halfway into the song, someone had requested that Anjali dance. The crowd parted. Anjali stepped forward. A space opened up for her in front of our big-screen TV. Onlookers cheered as Anjali swung her hips from side to side and flicked her wrists like the head of a snake. It was impossible for us to know then what we know now: that life would consume her. That she would wake up one morning and decide to never dance again.

  * * *

  The next morning, I came back from my run and noticed a text message from a strange phone number. It was Anjali. She wanted to meet for brunch. She wore a thin white dress that highlighted the bronze tone of her skin. Her hair fell in loose waves. Over buttered rolls and mimosas, she confessed to me that she’d had a crush on me when we were young.

  “I thought you were so cool with your cross-color jeans,” she said. “But you must have thought I was a loser.”

  Had I missed all the signs? We ate thick waffles drizzled with syrup and crunchy fried chicken. I was surprised when Anjali paid the bill. She tore it from my hands. “This one’s on me,” she said. “After all, you’re the one visiting.”

  Two days later, I took her to a Korean restaurant, where Anjali told me all about her life: her job at Walgreens, her applications to pharmacy school. Her parents wanted her to get married instead.

  “Nothing I ever do will justify being single,” she said. “I could be an astrophysicist and I’d still be single.”

  We talked about the parties we used to see each other at when we were young.

  “I never wanted to go. I was always thinking about whatever football game or school dance I was missing,” I said.

  “I k
new.”

  “You did?”

  “You looked miserable.”

  She told me she had only moved out of her parents’ house the month before. It was better this way. “Of course people talk,” she said, spearing a piece of chicken and sliding it into her mouth. “But I need my privacy.”

  After a few drinks, I asked Anjali the question that had been lingering on my mind.

  “Do you still talk to him? Your ex?”

  “Vijay?” She laughed. “Oh god, no. He’s dating some guy in Chicago. He’s out and proud. You should see the two of them together: matching tank tops and all.” She shook her head wistfully. “I must have been an idiot.”

  * * *

  We developed a routine. In the afternoons I read and went for runs and waited for Anjali to get off work. Then we cooked dinner at my place or hers. She lived in an apartment with track lighting. She had a cat named Karma. The first time we made love she rolled over naked and strode into the kitchen, her bare ass dimpled and red.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  She returned with a camera. “Stop it,” I said, when she started snapping pictures of my face.

  “Why?” she asked, surprised. “You’re beautiful.”

  I began seeing her in my dreams. I could close my eyes and picture her exactly: her smoky eyes, her plum-toned lips, the small hard mole on her left cheek, the sun-bleached strands of orange in her hair.

  She didn’t dance anymore. The lenghas and bindis and blouses were packed away in a box, sealed with mothballs.

  “I didn’t like all those uncles staring at my breasts,” she said.

  Once, I asked her to dance for me—naked. She pinched me on my arm. “Those are boyfriend privileges.”

  “Am I not your boyfriend?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know—are you?”

  The question went unanswered: we both knew that I was.

  * * *

  Once, Anjali and I were at my parents’ house watching a James Bond movie when the phone rang.

  “It’s my mother,” I said.

  “Is she scared you burned down the house?”

  I nudged her with my foot; it was raining outside. Anjali wore my high school gym shirt over a pair of pink shorts.

  “Answer it. I have to go now, anyway. I’m on the night shift.”

  She got up to leave when the phone went silent. “Wait.” I pulled her into my embrace. “Stay.”

  She kissed me on the chin before getting up again. I followed her to the door. Just as she pulled out of the driveway, gliding onto the slick, mirrored road, my mother called again.

  “Where were you?”

  “Upstairs,” I lied. “Why?”

  “No reason.” She relaxed. “I just haven’t heard from you, that’s all.”

  She whispered something to my father in the background, telling him to be quiet. Then she returned to the line.

  “I talked to Sharmila Aunty today. She called to see how the baby was doing. She sent Rohan a gift. She said she saw you the other day, with Bharati Aunty’s daughter, Anjali.”

  The way she mentioned Anjali’s name made my neck feel hot.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “How should I know where? But listen: it is not a good match.”

  I walked into the kitchen and poured myself a drink. “We’re just friends, Mom. I ran into her the other day. That’s all.”

  “Friends,” she said, slowly. “Friends—okay. Fine. But nothing more, ha?”

  “Why?”

  She clicked her tongue. “Are you asking me this? Didn’t you hear what she did?”

  “Of course I did. We all heard about the divorce. It’s not like it was her fault.”

  “Her fault?” My mother laughed, cruelly. “What rubbish are you talking? Of course it was her fault. One hundred percent!”

  Thunder cracked in the distance and punctuated my mother’s words. She told me what had happened. “Three years ago, Anjali met Vijay at a bar. They started dating. The families met and everything went fine. Honestly, we were surprised. Vijay’s parents are rich—very rich. What interest could they have in her? Anyway, Vijay and Anjali got married and that’s when everything changed. Anjali went crazy. She accused Vijay of having an affair. She shouted at him in public. Once, she chased after him in the kitchen with a knife. She lied about things, too: where she was, what she was doing, whom she was with. Do you know—she was involved with a black man? Hai bhagwan. Vijay got tired of her lies and the marriage was over. But Anjali didn’t stop. She showed up at his work one morning in a fit. She threatened to slash his tires. It wasn’t until Vijay’s parents called Bharati Aunty to tell them what had happened that we found out the truth—o mara baap!

  “She had problems,” my mother whispered. “Mental problems. I am just thanking God that it was Vijay and not you.”

  My back was coated with sweat. Rohan needed a bath; my mother had to go.

  “I thought he was gay.”

  “Who—Vijay?” she scoffed. “What nonsense. Who told you that?”

  “No one.”

  She warned me not let Anjali into the house. “I don’t want her there,” she said. Then she hung up the phone.

  * * *

  That night, I lay awake in my bedroom and thought about what my mother had said. Why would Anjali lie? Our honesty, the ease with which we had revealed every layer of ourselves, was what I enjoyed most about us. I tossed and turned all night, picturing Anjali chasing me with a knife. My cell phone rang the next morning, but I couldn’t pick up.

  She sent a text: Still sleeping?

  I ignored it and went for a run. Dr. Bernstein was pulling weeds from his yard. When I returned, jogging past brick houses with emerald lawns, there was a text message waiting for me on my phone.

  Call me back.

  She wanted to go swimming; the pool was open at her parents’ motel. I packed my duffel bag with a bathing suit and flip-flops and drove over there. When I arrived, the clouds had cleared and Anjali was relaxing at the end of a turquoise-colored pool.

  “It took you long enough.”

  She wore a two-piece bathing suit. Sunglasses shielded her eyes. Her legs shone like glazed chicken. I pulled up a lounge chair and lay down next to her.

  “I used to come here every day as a child,” she said, smearing sunscreen on her thighs.

  Shards of light spiked off the pool’s surface. In the distance, I could see a maid going into one of the motel rooms with a stack of white towels. “My thirteenth-birthday party was here. You were invited.”

  “I was?”

  “You never came.” She reached for my hand. “Not that I expected you to.”

  The coconut scent of her sunscreen made me hungry. I let her hand slip from mine.

  “You had your wedding here, right?”

  She stiffened. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” I said. “I just remembered the invitation. I was invited.”

  “You were invited.” She took a sip from her water bottle and screwed the cap back on. Then she got up and let her dark hair, coiled at her nape, fall neatly against her back. “Well, the whole world was invited,” she said. “You weren’t the only one. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going for a swim.” She dipped her toes into the pool before turning back around. “Unless you have any more questions.”

  * * *

  She was in a foul mood after that. We didn’t talk much as we dried and changed in one of the motel rooms and went for dinner at a Chinese restaurant nearby. Anjali slurped her noodles in silence.

  “What were you doing this morning, anyway, that it took you so long to call me back?”

  I looked up from my plate of orange chicken. “I was running.”

  “For five hours?”

  “Yeah, and then I showered, and read, and had breakfast and lunch.”

  “It just seemed odd,” Anjali said, twining noodles around her fork. “Usually you call me back right away.”

  I stared at he
r.

  “I was busy.”

  “Busy.” She wiped the grease from her fingers. “I see.” Later, when we were leaving the restaurant, she brought it up again. “You were obviously on your phone. You liked a bunch of pictures on Instagram—who the hell is Shanaz?”

  “Are you stalking me now?”

  She wasn’t amused. I must have struck a nerve, because she didn’t speak to me the rest of the night. I dropped her home and she didn’t invite me in. I didn’t ask to be invited, either. The next morning she called me but I didn’t call her back.

  She called again. “Look, I’m sorry. I lost my head.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It’s just that I really like you, Ankur. I wasn’t expecting to—not so soon—but I do.”

  My mother’s words reverberated through the back of my head. I shook them free. “I like you, too.”

  She was satisfied, suggesting we meet up that afternoon, for a picnic in the park. She would bring a bottle of wine. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she said.

  And she hung up the phone.

  * * *

  That afternoon, I tried but failed to distract myself with a book. I watered the houseplants, made a sandwich in the kitchen. I skimmed through the pages of an old Sports Illustrated magazine. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I went into my parents’ office and opened their file cabinet, which was filled with documents—SAT scores and tuition statements from college and beyond—and found a folder marked MISCELLANEOUS. Inside, stacks of greeting cards were bound together with a few expired passports and wedding invitations.

  Anjali’s was one of them.

  The invitation smelled of mothballs, and was in the shape of a book. The cover was made of satin, flecked with rhinestones. Inside, loose, thin pages indicated the timings for various events: dinner parties and dances and the wedding itself, which took place on a Saturday in June. My mother had advised me not to attend it. “Don’t even bother,” she’d said. “God knows how it will be.” I hadn’t heard much about it, only that my parents hadn’t stayed long. “The chole was off,” they complained. “And the naan was like rubber.”

  I stared at the invitation now, noticing Anjali’s name artfully linked with Vijay’s. I logged on to Facebook and clicked on her page. I entered Vijay’s name. There was nothing. I clicked on the search bar and entered it again: Vijay Desai. Out of a torrent of choices, only one of them could have been him: an accountant in Chicago. It was obvious. I remembered what Anjali had said, that Vijay was out and proud, but when I looked at his profile I saw nothing of the sort. His pictures—of himself in a crisp, black suit, playing baseball with friends, standing next to a woman who looked like a girlfriend or a wife—revealed nothing of his sexuality. His expression was stoic. Firm. The hairs on my neck stood on end. I closed the screen and picked up the loose pages of Anjali’s wedding invitation and returned them to the cabinet. What purpose did my mother have in keeping it all these years? Perhaps she had been saving it to remind herself of the truth: that the world was a cruel and unpredictable place.